Prescription for Disaster: Louisiana’s Opioid Addiction
Anne Ourso Landry | June 21, 2017
Every time Roy Martin has to replace an employee, it shells out at least $25,000 to hire and train someone new. And in recent years, the Alexandria-based lumber company has increasingly spent more to replace lost workers as a national epidemic has infiltrated the Louisiana workforce, driving up turnover and absenteeism rates, while decreasing productivity.
Good ‘ol fashion manual labor can certainly be tough on the body of the working man (and woman!). In fact, the National Bureau of Economic Research States that “The rate at which health deteriorates with age is faster in manual occupations than in non-manual occupations. For many people, work wears out their health” [3].
Drug use in the American workforce has reached the highest positivity rate in 12 years, according to an analysis of more than 10 million workforce drug test results recently released by Quest Diagnostics, a provider of diagnostic information services.
The annual Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index™ revealed that positivity in urine drug testing among the combined U.S. workforce in 2016 was 4.2%, a 5% relative increase over last year’s rate of 4.0%, and the highest annual positivity rate since 2004 (4.5%).
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In 2010, when Raphael was a first-semester college freshman struggling to get through finals, he did what it seemed like all his friends were doing: he got an Adderall from a fellow student and holed up in the library. It was the first time he’d tried the stimulant—a mixture of amphetamine salts often prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—which is often used off-label as a “study drug” by those not diagnosed with the disorder.
Fatigue is a growing problem affecting the workforce. Research estimates that 13% of workplace injuries can be attributed to fatigue.
A new report from the National Safety Council, Fatigue in the Workplace: Causes and Consequences of Employee Fatigue, breaks down a probability-based survey of more than 2,000 working adults and their experience with fatigue. The report shows that 97% of workers have at least one workplace fatigue risk factor, while more than 80% have more than one risk factor. When multiple risk factors are present, the potential for injuries on the job increases.
Health insurance claims for people hooked on prescription painkillers and heroin skyrocketed as the number of Americans who fatally overdosed on those opioids hit record highs, a new analysis reveals.
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